Schedule a Series of Emails

Learning Objectives

After completing this unit, you’ll be able to:

• Understand how segments are created.
  
• Explain two ways to find campaign KPIs.
  

The example marketing effort described in this unit can be accomplished in Starter and Pro Suite, and Marketing Cloud.

Event Follow-Up Email Series

Back at Ursa Major Solar, Erin has returned from the Alternative Energies Expo and has an idea for engaging all the new people that the team met. She goes to customer pros, Lincoln and Ada, to round up common questions and recommendations. Lincoln develops a timely series of emails to send to people who expressed interest in solar technology. Ada raises her hand to help build the email series. 

Plan an Email Series

Before Ada starts building, the team jots down a few to-do items.

• Get some images from the marketing team.
  
• Plot out the timing and content for each email.
  
• Identify criteria to segment the recipient list.
  
• Identify some target KPIs.
  

When it’s time to review KPIs, the team hopes to have a solid click-through rate and some new sales opportunities.

Ada will schedule three emails over 2 months, and focus content on solar benefits, cost offsets, and installation FAQs. To target the right group, she’ll build the segment off of lead source and opportunity fields.

Build an Email Series

Ada starts by logging in to Salesforce and creating a campaign. She chooses to start from the Message Series option, and names it Expo Follow-Up. 

A message series campaign is created in Flow Builder, a tool that helps you automate complex activities into multistep processes called flows. Similar to a single email campaign, a series campaign contains three primary parts: a schedule, segment (1), and content (2). 

There are two ways to create a message series: Open the flow and add or create each part from the canvas, or build the segment and content first and then bring them together in the flow. Ada decides to build things first, and then work in Flow Builder.

Identify the Audience

The audience for a message series campaign is based on a segment, which works like a dynamic list of targeted recipients. In a series, everyone in the segment receives each email based on the same schedule settings. Ada’s ready to get started. Let’s look at how it’s done.

1. Open the Segments tab, and then click New.
   
2. Give the segment a name, such as AEE Leads.
   
3. On the segment canvas, drag these attributes from Related Attributes and set the AND/OR selector.
   

• Lead | Lead Source: Is Equal To = AEE 2024 (1)
  
• Lead | Is Converted: Is Equal To = False (2)
  
• Selector: AND (3)
  

4. Click Save.
   

Now, Ada’s segment is available to use with emails. 

💡Tip: If you schedule emails more than a day or two in advance, check the segment population before you send. Someone with the System Administrator profile can check the population against your current email send usage and credits on the Company Information page in Salesforce Setup.   

Create Email Content

Since Ada chose a message series, her campaign record comes preset with two draft emails. To get started, she reopens the AEE Follow-Up campaign that she created and opens the emails for editing. Here’s how it’s done.

1. Open the email for editing.
   
2. From the campaign’s content section, click and then select Edit.
   

3. On the email editor Settings tab, enter important information about the email.
   

• Title: AEE Follow-Up 1 
  
• Description: First email in Expo Follow-Up series. 
  
• Message Purpose: Promotional
  
• Subject Line: So you’re interested in solar?
  
• Preheader: How solar panels can benefit everyone for years to come.
  

4. Continue adding components and content as needed, as described in the previous unit.
   

• Decide whether to customize styles for the email or specific components.
  
• Add the required Physical Address and Unsubscribe merge fields.
  
• Add merge fields to personalize content in paragraph and heading components or in the subject line field.
  

5. To check formatting and verify that merge fields render as expected, click Preview.
   
6. In the toolbar, click Save, and then click Publish.
   

Ada edits the other default email, and then creates a third follow-up email from the Content tab by clicking Add and then choosing the content type Email.

Combine Work in a Campaign Flow

With a segment and the emails complete, Ada’s ready to bring the pieces together and build this series of flow elements.

Here’s how it’s done.

1. Open the AEE Follow-Up campaign.
   
2. Click Open Flow.
   
3. In the Start element, click Select Segment.
   

• In the Segment field, search for AEE, and then select the AEE Leads segment.
  

4. Confirm that the email elements refer to the Follow-Up 1 and 2 emails you created.
   
5. Add the first email.
   

• Click the Send Email Message element, and click Edit Element.
  
• In the Email panel, replace the default email with AEE Follow-Up 1 in the Select Email field.
  

6. Configure the wait time between emails.
   

• Click the Wait for Amount of Time element, and click Edit Element.
  
• In the fields provided, enter 1 day.
  

7. Add the Follow-Up 3 email to the flow canvas.
   

• To add an element, hover over the Add Element icon , click the , and then select the Send Email Message element.
  
• In the element’s editing panel, search for and select the Follow-Up 3 email.
  

8. Add and configure other elements as needed.
   
9. Open the Start element, and click Set Schedule.
   

• In the Set a Schedule panel, select Start Immediately after Activation.
  

10. In the toolbar, save the flow, and then click Activate.
    

Right away, Salesforce checks the data for leads that originated from the expo mixer. Those people are added to the segment, and the first email is queued for sending immediately. Tomorrow, the same people (minus any converted leads) will receive the second email, and so on.

Email Series Outcome

Ada checks her reports, and sees awesome click-through rates on the email. She sets a reminder to check again in 2 weeks.

Creating an email series allowed Ursa Major Solar to schedule emails in advance for a targeted group. They can also continue to monitor performance and tweak the content over time. Nice work, team!

Resources

• Salesforce Help: Promote Your Business with Salesforce Starter
• Salesforce Help: Marketing Cloud Growth
• Video: Tour Starter Marketing
• Video Playlist: Customizing Emails